Last sum­mer, we high­light­ed an almost unbe­liev­ably rich resource for music fans: the Music Vault, a Youtube archive of 22,000 live con­cert videos from a range of artists, span­ning about four decades into the present. In a time of soar­ing tick­et prices, the Music Vault allows us to catch a show at home for free, and to see bands we missed in their hey­day per­form on stages around the world. Last sum­mer, I wrote, “enjoy revis­it­ing the glo­ry days and rest assured, they aren’t going away any­time soon.” But I spoke too soon, as many Music Vault videos (there were only 13,000 then) began dis­ap­pear­ing, along with the nos­tal­gia and hip cur­ren­cy they offered. Well, now they’re back up and run­ning, and let’s hope it’s for good.

Unsurprisingly—given its asso­ci­a­tion with Wolf­gang’s Vault, a restora­tion and archive project that began with the col­lec­tion of leg­endary con­cert pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham—the Music Vault’s store­house includes per­haps more Grate­ful Dead mate­r­i­al than any­thing else, like the near­ly six hour Win­ter­land con­cert above from 1978. Check out the intro inter­view with now Sen­a­tor, then come­di­an Al Franken, doing some polit­i­cal humor for radio sta­tion KSAN. (And see Franken do anoth­er Dead intro skit in 1980 at Radio City Music Hall here.) There’s so much Grate­ful Dead in fact, they get their own chan­nel. You’ll also find plen­ty more live clas­sic rock shows from Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Mor­ri­son, the Stones, Joe Cock­er, and more. (Check out this rare show from a pre-Van Halen Sam­my Hagar in 1978.)

If that’s not what you’re into, there’s also plen­ty of punk and new wave, like the clas­sic Talk­ing Heads per­for­mance of “Life Dur­ing Wartime” above at the Capi­tol The­atre from 1980 (see the com­plete con­cert here). You can also catch Iggy Pop in ’86, Blondie in ’79, the Ramones in ’78, Prince in ’82, or Green Day in ’94. You don’t get the cred from say­ing you were there, what­ev­er that’s worth, but you get the thrill of see­ing these artists in their prime, (almost) live and direct. Fan­cy more con­tem­po­rary fare? Check out the New Music Dis­cov­ery chan­nel with live per­for­mances from cur­rent acts, curat­ed by Daytrot­ter and Paste Mag­a­zine. Dig funk, soul, and reg­gae? They’ve got you cov­ered, with shows from Par­lia­ment-Funkadel­ic, Jim­my Cliff, Cur­tis May­field, and many more. See Bob Mar­ley and the Wail­ers do a stel­lar ren­di­tion of “No Woman, No Cry” at the Oak­land Audi­to­ri­um in 1979, below.

More of a jazz cat? No wor­ries, Music Vault has an exten­sive jazz chan­nel fea­tur­ing every­one from Miles Davis to Her­bie Han­cock to Tony Ben­net, and includ­ing new­er artists like vocal­ist Lizz Wright and trio The Bad Plus. (They’ve even got a sur­pris­ing per­for­mance from Orange is the New Black’s Lea DeLar­ia at the New­port Jazz Fes­ti­val in 2002.) The Music Vault also hosts clas­sic music doc­u­men­taries and inter­views, like the Rolling Stones 1976 Euro­pean Tour doc­u­men­tary below. (Oth­er high­lights include doc­u­men­tary Last Days at the Fill­more and a 1974 inter­view with Bill Gra­ham.) What­ev­er your thing is, you’ll prob­a­bly find a lit­tle bit, or a lot, of it in this enor­mous data­base of live con­cert film and video and oth­er fea­tures (though almost no pop, r&b, or hip-hop). If you don’t, check back lat­er. The Music Vault promis­es to add new “hand-curat­ed” con­cert videos dai­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Grate­ful Dead’s Final Farewell Con­certs Now Stream­ing Online

10,173 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

What Was Your First Live Con­cert? We’ll Show You Ours, Share Yours.

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The man of a thou­sand hair­cuts, David Bowie has been the van­guard for cre­ative rein­ven­tion for longer than many of his fans have been alive. As soon as he’s made us think he’s exhaust­ed his imag­i­na­tion, he reap­pears with yet anoth­er album, anoth­er look, anoth­er the­atri­cal tour. Except that last bit isn’t like­ly to hap­pen again. We may have seen the end of Bowie the per­former some time ago, accord­ing to such sources as long­time Bowie pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti (who worked with him on 2013’s The Next Day) and British con­cert pro­mot­er John Gid­dings.

“David is one of the best artists I’ve ever worked with,” said Gid­dings in Octo­ber, ”but every time I see him now, before I even speak to him, he goes, ‘I’m not tour­ing.’” Does this rule out the odd one-off appear­ance? Who knows. Noth­ing is for cer­tain with Bowie. But it may well be that the per­for­mance above, a duet of “Changes” with Ali­cia Keys from 2006, rep­re­sents the leg­endary shape shifter’s last gig. (And if so, we hope some bet­ter-qual­i­ty video of it sur­faces.)

Bowie appeared with Keys, Dami­an Mar­ley, and come­di­an Wan­da Sykes at New York’s Ham­mer­stein Ball­room for a fundrais­er and sang Sta­tion to Sta­tion’s “Wild is the Wind” and Lodger’s “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” in addi­tion to “Changes,” all fit­ting notes to end on, if this is indeed the end of his live per­form­ing career. He had rarely tak­en the stage since his 2004 heart attack dur­ing the Real­i­ty tour, but, Rolling Stone points out, “that didn’t stop him from play­ing with Arcade Fire twice in 2005 and David Gilmour the fol­low­ing year.”

But that was ten years ago. Dur­ing the record­ing of The Next Day, Vis­con­ti report­ed that Bowie insist­ed there would be no live shows, and there weren’t. Now, Bowie’s sur­prised us again with a new album, Black­star, and a ten-minute video, above, that looks like all the para­noid dystopi­an visions in 90s albums like Out­side, Earth­ling, and Hea­then come ter­ri­fy­ing­ly true. I can imag­ine this most recent, per­haps final, entry in the Bowie canon would make for a hell of a stage show, but it looks like he will pass that torch to the younger artists who con­tin­ue to inspire him as he ages grace­ful­ly. Black­star will be released on Jan­u­ary 8th, Bowie’s 69th birth­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

We think of the eight­ies and ear­ly nineties as the age of music video, as pre­dict­ed by the Bug­gles all the way back in ‘79. There’s pre­cious lit­tle rea­son to argue with the cul­tur­al pre­science of their “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the very first video MTV aired. After the rise of the music chan­nel, almost no one could push a sin­gle with­out a video in the rota­tion on cable. Even now, though MTV may have ced­ed the whole music video thing to the inter­net a long time ago, the prin­ci­ple remains.

Yet well over a decade before MTV debuted, pio­neer­ing musi­cians took to music video (or film) with the same nat­ur­al affin­i­ty as Michael Jack­son, Phil Collins, Prince, or Van Halen did dur­ing the network’s hey­day. Over a decade before the Buggles—a pun on The Beatles—there was, well… The Bea­t­les, bona fide music video stars, with hip pro­mos like that for “Pen­ny Lane,” above, which would have fit right in on MTV. (“Is that Oasis?” “No, it’s The Bea­t­les, man!”)

Shot in 1968 in East Lon­don, an estate in Kent, and Liv­er­pool (home of the real Pen­ny Lane), the video achieved its mod­ern look by chance, since direc­tor Peter Gold­mann had to find cre­ative ways to get around a Musi­cians’ Union ban on mim­ing for the cam­era. Before the ban, filmed musi­cal per­for­mances typ­i­cal­ly fea­tured bands lip-sync­ing to a back­ing track, as you can see in the pro­mo video for “Hel­lo, Good­bye” above, which debuted on the Ed Sul­li­van show in Novem­ber, 1967. This one was direct­ed by Sir Paul him­self, though he did not enjoy the expe­ri­ence, as he lat­er recount­ed. “It was some­thing I’d always been inter­est­ed in,” McCart­ney said, “until I actu­al­ly tried it.”

That Musi­cians’ Union mim­ing ban was still in place when the band went into the Abbey Road stu­dios in 1968 to record the video for “Hey Jude,” above. Direc­tor Michael Lind­say-Hogg got around it by invit­ing an audi­ence of 300 peo­ple into the stu­dio for the finale, mak­ing it seem like a live per­for­mance, though every­thing was pre­re­cord­ed but Paul’s vocals. The sin­gle had already gone on sale a week pri­or to film­ing, but the pro­mo film was the first intro­duc­tion many fans had to the song, first on David Frost’s The Frost Report, then on The Smoth­ers Broth­ers’ Com­e­dy Hour in the U.S. a month lat­er. In the first minute of the video, the band goofs around with some fake jazz (prov­ing that their gui­tars were, in fact, plugged in).

Though the “Hey Jude” film was shot in col­or, no orig­i­nal view­ers would have seen it that way. As Dan­ger­ous Minds points out, we get to view this video “in far, far bet­ter qual­i­ty than you’d ever have been able to see it dur­ing those orig­i­nal tele­vi­sion broad­casts, back when most peo­ple in Britain and Amer­i­ca would have been watch­ing it on low res­o­lu­tion B&W TV sets.” Com­pare, for exam­ple, the short clip from a broad­cast at the time above with the pris­tine “Hey Jude” video we have now. All of these Bea­t­les videos have been restored and dig­i­tal­ly enhanced in HD, and you can see these and more at The Bea­t­les Vevo chan­nel on Youtube. These come from the re-release of sin­gles col­lec­tion 1 on Blu-ray, which includes sev­er­al dozen more videos in addi­tion to 27 of the band’s #1 sin­gles.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing is the 1967 pro­mo for “A Day in the Life,” above, edit­ed from film­ing of the orig­i­nal ses­sions. As The Bea­t­les Youtube chan­nel informs us, “this was no ordi­nary record­ing ses­sion. The clas­si­cal musi­cians, who had been asked to wear evening dress, took it upon them­selves to wear fake noses, fun­ny hats and gen­er­al­ly enter into the spir­it of the occa­sion.” The ses­sions were “filmed between 8pm and 1am with guests includ­ing Mick Jag­ger and Kei­th Richards,” both of whom you’ll see appear in the fray of musi­cians, along with many shots of Paul McCart­ney con­duct­ing the orches­tra.

Did The Bea­t­les invent the music video? That’s a debate for the forums. But they were sure­ly one of the first, if not the first, to use them as a pri­ma­ry pro­mo­tion­al tool—along with their films and mer­chan­dis­ing. As far back as 1965, the band released pro­mo films for their sin­gles, like that for “We Can Work it Out,” above, one of three dif­fer­ent videos the band shot for this song. In fact, it’s not anachro­nism to refer to this ear­ly exam­ple of the form as a “music video” since it was actu­al­ly shot on two-inch black and white video­tape. The for­mat had not come into wide enough use at the time, so it was dis­trib­uted on 16mm film.

Mak­ing music videos—on video—is just one of the many ways The Bea­t­les have antic­i­pat­ed, or pre­cip­i­tat­ed, the future of music. One of the ways they’ve lagged behind, or per­haps wise­ly held out, is in releas­ing their music to stream­ing and on-demand ser­vices like Spo­ti­fy, Google Play, or Apple Music.  That’s changed as of today, when 13 albums and four com­pi­la­tions become avail­able to stream on nine sub­scrip­tion ser­vices. No telling what Lennon and Har­ri­son would have thought, but Paul McCart­ney described the music’s dig­i­tal recep­tion as “fan­tas­tic” when the band first made a deal with iTunes in 2010. The remain­ing band mem­bers have released no state­ment this time around but a short pro­mo video and a jol­ly hol­i­day greet­ing: “Hap­py Crim­ble, with love from us to you.”

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

Down­load The Bea­t­les’ Yel­low Sub­ma­rine as a Free, Inter­ac­tive eBook

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

This morn­ing, Josh Jones high­light­ed for you the new HD ver­sions of Bea­t­les videos on Youtube, and, along the way men­tioned that, start­ing today, the Bea­t­les’ music cat­a­log — 13 albums and 4 com­pi­la­tions — would become avail­able on var­i­ous music stream­ing ser­vices, includ­ing Spo­ti­fy. The switch has been flipped on all of that, and below, you can find a Spo­ti­fy playlist of the Bea­t­les’ albums. 14 hours of Bea­t­les bliss.

You can also access the Spo­ti­fy playlist on the web here. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

A Playlist of 172 Songs from Wes Ander­son Sound­tracks: From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel

An 18-Hour Playlist of Read­ings by the Beats: Ker­ouac, Gins­berg & Even Bukows­ki Too